Remembering her 45-year career in a wide range of musical genres, as well as her remarkable life, 12-time Grammy Award winner Linda Ronstadt presents this warm-hearted memoir "with a mixture of fine-grained insight and personal modesty" (SFChronicle). Ronstadt was born into a musical Mexican-American family in Tucson, Arizona; her childhood was filled with Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, Mexican folk music, jazz, and classical opera, and she and her siblings performed for anyone who would listen. At 18, Ronstadt arrived in Los Angeles just as the folk-rock movement was beginning to bloom, and with the like-minded artists who played at the Troubadour club in West Hollywood, helped to define the country-rock style that dominated American music in the 1970s. Also reflecting on her Tony Award–nominated performance in The Pirates of Penzance, her turn at the Great American Songbook with Nelson Riddle, and her recording of traditional Mexican canciones, Ronstadt reveals the many aspects of her long-lasting success and the stories behind many of her beloved songs.

"Ronstadt's memoir is remarkable but not for reasons that readers might think; it is remarkable because of its very ordinariness. There are no tales of parental cruelty or substance abuse. She is lucky that her life has been exceedingly normal, or as normal as it can be for someone as talented and famous as she is, having sold more than a million records. Retired from performing since 2009, Ronstadt now looks back fondly to her childhood in Arizona—her Mexican heritage comes from her father's side—and shares anecdotes about life on the road, including her first gigs at area coffeehouses and her decision when still a teenager to move by herself to Los Angeles because that was 'where the music was.' She writes about her work with the folk-rock band the Stone Poneys, becoming a solo act, exploring the Great American Songbook, recording traditional Mexican folk songs with Rubén Fuentes, and her famous musical friendships, including those with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. Ronstadt's fans will love this refreshingly nice and gracious musical memoir."—Booklist